Yet you say I'm the one who's embarrassing?
Please, half quotes are what primary school children and sub-trolls do.
No, 7 has better multicore and parallel computing support than XP. That's a real improvement.
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Microsoft Posts 'PC vs. Mac' Section to Windows 7 Website
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Yet you say I'm the one who's embarrassing?
Please, half quotes are what primary school children and sub-trolls do.
No, 7 has better multicore and parallel computing support than XP. That's a real improvement.
Yes, there's debate...as well as selective spin-doctoring. So why hasn't Microsoft made a clear, definitive and official statement (as documented in a FAQ) that you could have been able to alternatively cite? Apple reliably receives criticism for being tight-lipped about certain issues, and yet here is Microsoft doing the same thing....and golly, that's apparently okay.
Discontinued a year ago, which meant that it was active for years under Vista...but golly, haven't we been told that all of those nasty Registry Rot problems supposedly disappeared way back with XP? Strike two.
Not as a clearly dedicated stand-alone, true.
But since they do offer a product that includes cleaning the register, false.
Specifically, you've identified Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) as a current product, and as per the same website that you've cited as authoritative, MSE does do Registry repairs & cleaning:
Thus, yet another convenient half truth: Strike three.
Of course, the general discussion point was a sidebar distraction from the original topic of this thread is the Microsoft Website which is trying to discourage consumers from considering one OS which Windows competes against. With today's insight on these ongoing maintainability challenges, the question is if one were free to do it all over again, would one would choose to do it the same way again, or to use a different structure? YMMV, but I suspect not:
With today's insight on these ongoing maintainability challenges, the question is if one were free to do it all over again, would one would choose to do it the same way again, or to use a different structure? YMMV, but I suspect not: MS has written themselves into a maintainability corner which will remain relatively difficult to supercede and replace.
The various Apologists can continue to squabbling about minutia details of this or that, but it doesn't matter, since these are mere attempts to distract from the big picture, which is not words, but actions:
thus, what is most telling is that despite a 90+% marketshare, as manifested by this topic's website being created (an action) & clearly intended to try to minimize customer defections, Microsoft is clearly not particularly confident that their product can compete on just its own technical merits.
-hh
MacRumors: official home of the Redmond Defense Force, Android Army and Adobe Alliance for Proprietary Web Standards.
I can barely remember when this forum was about, and populated by, actual Mac users.
Laptop Hunter ads were the tipping point.
MacRumors: official home of the Redmond Defense Force, Android Army and Adobe Alliance for Proprietary Web Standards.
I can barely remember when this forum was about, and populated by, actual Mac users.
That was a good chuckle.
MacRumors: official home of the Redmond Defense Force, Android Army and Adobe Alliance for Proprietary Web Standards.
I can barely remember when this forum was about, and populated by, actual Mac users.
What exactly makes you think that MacRumors is a site for Mac users? It's a site about Mac rumors. Not more, not less.
MacRumors: official home of the Redmond Defense Force, Android Army and Adobe Alliance for Proprietary Web Standards.
And home of the Apple apologists, Steve's Barmy Army, iPhone Antennae-Denialists and the $chool of Hilarious Anti-Micro$oft Lexicographers.
In case you're wondering - I AM a Mac user. And an iOS user. And an Android user, and a Windows user.
I use whatever I find best for the job in any situation.
The sad fact remains that there is a thriving market for this, due to the multiple flaws and vulnerabilities inherent to the archaic Registry.
Not to mention that the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE section of the Registry is a single point of failure, which can also leave a Windows system un-bootable.
Windows users with hosed machines due to application installs, incomplete uninstalls, corrupted file(s), etc. are often compelled to resort to Registry Cleaners and Editors - I've seen more systems get hosed because of corrupted Registry entries than any other cause.
Furthermore, The Registry is an attractive target for hackers - a number of Registry vulnerabilities have been exploited over the years.
With Unix/OS X - text config files, separate files for each program. If a config file is corrupted, it screws up only one program, not the entire system - no comparison whatsoever.
Registry Rot? What's that?
Didn't you hear?
Files aren't even stored in The Registry:
Deliberate oversight, perhaps?
Perhaps not.
So true - the very notion that MS would cling to such a vulnerable, archaic, flawed, problematic, redundant, cryptic, and decrepit excuse for a database, is revelatory in-and-of-itself.
Or lack thereof.
Well stated.
At least Microsoft succeeded in creating a crash-free glider experience.
Oh wait...
(Truly LOL-worthy.)
Nice dance moves though. Microsoft retail store employees I wager?
Not even CNET Microsoft cheerleader Ina Fried can salvage this one.
Oh wait...
(Truly LOL-worthy.)
Nice dance moves though. Microsoft retail store employees I wager?
Not even CNET Microsoft cheerleader Ina Fried can salvage this one.
Much of which would more likely be resolved had MS had a leader like Jobs, who is willing to take the heat for making clear, definitive statements for his corporation regarding their product(s).
As I said, there's apparently no Definitive MS FAQ statement on this issue, which is also why we can get seemingly contradictory statements from various Microsoft MVPs...a position that we should note are not Microsoft employees or officially recognized corporate spokespersons, as is explicitly stated in Microsoft's FAQ.
Deliberate oversight, perhaps?
Perhaps not.
During the last nine (9) years of my participation on MR, there has been phenominally few posters whose habits of "deliberate oversights" were repeated often enough to have finally merited the MR killfile. Periodically, their "Ignore" status is reviewed, to see if I was perhaps ethically wrong to have put them there. In this case, I see that I did not make a mistake.
Thanks. The interesting part are the ankle-biters who are so fervently trying to create any distraction possible from this very obvious big picture issue.
Personally, I'd find it more interesting to take the next logical step and ask: So why is Microsoft manifestly so afraid of Apple to have taken this Marketing step?
This campaign seems to be trying to turn a very blind eye to the existence of Microsoft's MacBU products...which IIRC are not only reportedly quite profitable, but for whom the release of Mac Office 2011 is impending. As such, is this campaign a case of a corporate "Left Hand not knowing what the Right Hand is doing", or is that that they know, but they're willing to sabotage their own product sales, because this would be a strategically more beneficial somehow?
As per Occam's Razor, simple ineptitude by MS is the more easily explained answer, but MacOffice isn't a new product, so the Razor could have also argued that it is also way too obvious to have been so easily overlooked.
I'm not entirely sure, but the simple question would appear to be: would the TBD sales differential of Windows OS for the home consumer market alone be strategically worth the potential sacrifice of TBD sales of Mac Office 2011, or is it something else (more?)?
Since this is a Rumors site, this would be an interesting avenue to speculatively explore...
-hh
Good god, don't they know the Wright Bros and foes had the competition for learning to fly over 100 years ago? At least MacOS vs WinOS was/is relevant to the decades in which it has taken place.
This should come as no surprise. Microsoft has been successfully profiting from Mac software while simultaneously trying to torpedo the platform for many years now. How else can one explain the obviously-intentional feature-gimping (or perhaps even performance-gimping) of their Mac-based Office equivalents? The thought that the Mac BU is an semi-independent entity full of committed Mac users under no spoken (or unspoken) corporate directive to make Mac software that's "good enough, but not as good as the Windows stuff" would seem naive.
Mac vs PC, let the Jokers decide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM2GxfRLnRA
Just like the Joker, they both take an entirely unique approach to solving computer needs. I use both, and probably will for some time to come.
BRCG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM2GxfRLnRA
Just like the Joker, they both take an entirely unique approach to solving computer needs. I use both, and probably will for some time to come.
BRCG
While there are some legal definitions of monopoly power, etc. I'm not a big fan of calling something a monopoly that obviously isn't. While small parts of the overall share, Linux and particularly OSX are clearly real alternatives to Windows. The only thing holding them back are a lack of standardization in Linux's case and high prices and high profit margins over a push for market penetration in OSX's case. In other words, they aren't doing what is required to even try and get higher market penetration, so you cannot blame the current market share situation entirely on Microsoft. Even how they got to where they are in the present is based largely on the bad decisions of competing companies during the 1980s and 1990s. Most of Microsoft's market power abuses had little to do with those early companies (e.g. Commodore, Apple and Atari) and more to do with things that came later (e.g. Netscape's complaint about IE being shipped with Windows, dealer contracts that insisted they not include other OSs like Dr. Dos or Linux, etc.)
From Apple to Commodore to Atari, they all had one thing in common. They released their operating system ONLY for their own hardware and that is the primary area Microsoft gained a huge advantage early on by sheer market share. You can argue all day long about anti-competitive behavior, but that only applied to operating systems that ALSO ran on the same Intel/AMD hardware. One cannot complain that Microsoft had ANYTHING to do with the fact that AmigaDos shipped on Amigas and MacOS on Macs and TOS on Atari ST. They didn't stop people from becoming Amiga dealers, for example. My local Amiga dealer also sold PCs (including those made by Commodore).
You could argue that IBM backing MS-Dos had a LOT to do with its acceptance (and computers in general) in business, however and THAT was more important back then than anything else. After all, Commodore sold more home computers that anyone else during the 1980s, but being known for gaming and demos doesn't do you much good for getting your office work done at home (as that work started migrating out of the office). Ultimately that fact along with bad business management is what did Commodore in, despite a superior platform to nearly everything out there in the late 80's. Add to the fact that what made the Amiga special was its custom chip set is also what made it hard to upgrade in terms of sound and video (at least for the integrated consumer type Amiga models), which delayed it getting 256 color mode (which PC gaming was heading full steam ahead into by the early '90s) and you had a recipe for disaster. Atari 8-bit was popular in the U.S., but the ST was never very popular over here compared to Europe. It had a niche in early MIDI recording due to the built-in MIDI ports, but that's not enough to differentiate it and in other areas it paled next to the Amiga (but that only split those interested in graphics and sound between them).
The PC's survival was inevitable due to its entrenchment in business (and that may be also the reason Apple is the one of the other three to survive as the Mac DID have significant penetration into some types of businesses that Commodore and Atari largely did not have). Otherwise, MS-Dos would have died in the '80s due to inferior graphics and sound options at the time. The Mac, however, had a shot at being THE system for business in the '90s, but due to Apple's short-sighted decision early on to NOT push it into high market share in favor of high prices and therefore high profits is what killed any chance of it getting enough market share to surpass MS-Dos despite a superior (graphical) interface. When Windows came out, that was the final nail in the coffin. You cannot compete with high volume cheap computers without something major to differentiate you from the competition.
Unfortunately, that is the very situation Apple now faces again in a new market (the mobile "iOS" device market). Apple wants high profits so they do not push iOS to other hardware manufacturer devices in favor of selling iPhones and iPads at the highest possible profit margins. The problem is Google is NOT going to go that direction and thus the writing is on the wall all over again. The Mac started out strong in the mid '80s and ended up irrelevant by the end of the '90s. Likewise, the iPhone has revolutionized the smart phone industry, but I feel it will also end up irrelevant in the next ten years because Android will be EVERYWHERE and available for nearly every device sold that isn't made by Apple or RIM. Assuming the feature of the OS catches up quickly, the hardware will most certainly far surpass Apple's hardware in short order due multiple manufacturers competing for the most features, etc. and Apple being stuck in longer product cycles since it's the only manufacturer of the iPhone. Prices will most certainly be cheaper on the Android platform due to competition since they will run the same OS.
In short, it is the SAME thing all over again and history is going to repeat itself with Apple again. This time people won't be able to say that "if only Steve Jobs were at Apple, Microsoft never would have won" because IMO it never mattered whether he was there or not in the 1990s. Maybe the operating system would have done better sooner, but the marketing strategy would have been exactly the same and the prices would have been just as high and so Apple never would gained the foothold on market share that Microsoft has. In fact, even today when they had a chance to regain a lot of that lost market share while Vista was very unpopular, they chose to raise prices instead of lowering them and to not compete directly with small micro-towers that have been the hallmark of home Windows based PCs for nearly two decades! Yes, this gave them high profits again, but profitability by itself can be fleeting over time whereas market share ensure long term survivability.
If my prediction is true and the iPhone/iOS market eventually loses most of its early share to Google/Android based devices for the same reasons that Apple lost its ~20% share to <3% share (high prices and lack of hardware competition), Apple could find itself back to 1998 in a very short period of time. Any gains the Mac got due to Vista will start evaporating as they spend all their efforts trying to keep iOS devices from falling behind multiple companies all working to out-do each others' hardware for Android OS. So with little to no personal computing share as Windows steams past a floundering Apple that is putting all its efforts into gadgets instead of computers and diminished iOS share due to one company not being able to compete with multiple companies doing the same thing for less, Apple will have to either innovate into new areas (maybe Apple branded waffle makers?
) or evaporate into obscurity once again.I'd prefer that NOT happen as I do want choices other than just Windows. Stagnation is likely to occur with only one operating system being out there. I can imagine Google pushing its own flavor of Unix or Linux in the future, however. They seem to be heading in that direction and unlike Apple, the wouldn't have a vested interest in selling hardware, thus creating a conflict of interests for the best possible operating system). In fact, if someone would just force Linux to use ONE standard set of libraries, package managers, etc. and could get a large market share in place, it could be competitive, but short of someone like Google that has a lot of clout, I don't see that happening since there's just too many distributions and competing standards. Linus Tovalds probably could have mandated a set of core standards, but he clearly has no interest in such a thing. Many Linux people are anti-commercial enterprise anyway and couldn't care less if something like Photoshop or various games are EVER available for Linux. For the rest of us, the lack of commercial software is a platform killer. But I fear Apple is just too greedy to ever choose lower prices or license the OS out to other hardware vendors in order to get higher market share so it'll either remain a profitable niche market or eventually face obscurity once again.
I don't believe that history necessarily repeat itself here for many reasons, some of which include:
The hardware scenario is completely different. Designing and manufacturing mobile devices is an entirely new ball game. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry can throw together a mobile device like they could a desktop PC. This is expensive micro-engineering. No more generic motherboards, power supplies and enclosures. Remember the glory days of Computer Shopper magazine? Not gonna happen in mobile. Hobbyists will not be building their own mobile devices. Small companies will not be able to jump into the fray. This market is reserved for the Big Boys. And the Motorolas or Dells of the world have no pricing advantage over Apple in the mobile space, particularly when Apple has the iPod driving volume purchasing as well. Displays, processors, storage, components - Apple can source these just as cheaply, if not more cheaply, than its competitors. Will competitors try to outsell Apple by slashing their profit margins to the bone? Probably. It seems they haven't learned from their past mistakes (a la the desktop & mobile PC market). But I think Apple has enough leverage now to withstand such desperate measures. And I think HP's acquisition of Palm indicates their unwillingness to continue to be bare-margin hardware manufacturing drones for the ecosystem owner (Microsoft or Google).
Also, as consumer devices, industrial design will be much more important to buyers than it was in the desktop computing space. Which do you want in your pocket - the Mac Pro equivalent or the Dell Optiplex equivalent? People may be happy with generic-looking plastic boxes under their desks, but they will be much choosier about what they carry around with them all day.
Android fragmentation will increasingly become problematic. A vast array of form factors present more problems for Google than computers did for Microsoft (and the problems posed to Microsoft by a sea of disparate hardware were significant enough, and a major factor in the Switcher trend). It seems no two Android devices on the shelves for sale right now run the same OS version. Some will be stuck permanently on the version they're shipping with. Not a big selling point.
And don't forget about the ecosystem. iOS has not only a far larger app catalog, but a far higher quality collection of applications. Developers can make more money with iOS and will continue to flock to the platform. Volume and quantity continue to rise. Whereas Android is still stuck in "Me Too" land with much of their software, and much of the rest of it targeted to hardcore tech nerds and not general consumers. iOS devices also offer more accessories and more system integration options (integrated car audio, etc.). And don't forget about iTunes, the competitive answer to which has not yet been found.
Is there still time for Apple to screw everything up? Absolutely. But the assumption that Google is going to be king in mobile due solely to a flood of hardware may have more parallels to Microsoft's Plays For Sure debacle than to Microsoft's domination of desktop computing.
And one of these days people are going to wake up and realize that Google is not giving them Android out of love. It's giving them Android to mine as much information as possible from them to sell them advertising. And Google will start to lose its "Good Guy" image in this war as they continue to make shady deals (a la Verizon & Net Neutrality) in its quest for market domination. At least Apple's intentions are clear: they want to sell you iGadgets. Google's motivation appears more obscure, and thus more suspicious. Google is the prophesied Big Brother, and their iron grip on the way the world accesses information should be terrifying to any rational thinker right now. I can always walk away from my iPhone/iPod/iMac. Can I walk away from Google?
And Apple have thus far proven far more savvy about the consumer market - which is the market that will drive mobile - than its competitors. Or than its detractors care to admit. And their focus on the user experience - rather than on techie-oriented feature-itis, is the better approach here.
Ultimately I just want to see Microsoft completely shut out of the mobile space. They've already done their damage to the world of technology. We'll see if Apple or Google can handle market dominance more responsibly. It will be an interesting battle to watch.
I believe pretty much every court of law on the planet disagreed with you on this point.
"Hassle-free files at work.
Apple's productivity suite file formats won't open in Microsoft Office on PCs. This can be a real hassle for Mac users sharing work documents with PC users."
I especially like this one. Sad argument considering most Microsoft Office files will open in iWork. How come Microsoft won't make their program compatible for us. Apple has worked to make the transition easy for PC users. Sounds like someone is slacking.
Apple's productivity suite file formats won't open in Microsoft Office on PCs. This can be a real hassle for Mac users sharing work documents with PC users."
I especially like this one. Sad argument considering most Microsoft Office files will open in iWork. How come Microsoft won't make their program compatible for us. Apple has worked to make the transition easy for PC users. Sounds like someone is slacking.
When we consider that Office is the industry standard, who should accommodate who? Office is available for both platforms. They provide a solution as far as I see it.
Odd then that the company authoring that webpage doesn't know that Office exists on both platforms ... and that its their own product.
... or are they admitting that they have purposefully hamstrung the one version to screw over their competitor at the expense of their own customer base?
Catch-22 for Microsoft.
-hh
Seems they'd rather shoot themselves in the foot for the sake of their poor excuse of a "Get a PC Campaign."
Sad.
Priceless, truly priceless.
That might be true. But feature wise iWorks is leagues ahead IMHO (YMMV) And talking about business and office stuff: it is so easy to create PDF files on MAC. Does Windows 7 even come with a default PDF viewer?